MISRYOUM Science News — There’s something oddly reassuring about the way NASA frames this: the “god of chaos” asteroid is coming close, but it won’t hit. Apophis, named after the ancient Egyptian deity known as the “god of chaos,” is expected to zoom past Earth on April 13, 2029.
The asteroid—roughly the size of three football fields—will approach to within about 20,000 miles of Earth’s surface, closer than many orbiting satellites. The agency notes that the highest satellites typically orbit around 22,000 miles above the equator, so Apophis will be, for a moment, in that awkwardly human-feeling neighborhood. People on the ground in the Eastern Hemisphere will be able to observe it with their own eyes, weather permitting, according to NASA.
Scientists have long tracked Apophis as a “potentially hazardous asteroid,” but they’re also clear on the big point: the flyby poses no danger. After years of monitoring, NASA says it’s confident there’s no risk of Earth impact for at least 100 years. “There is no danger to Earth, to anyone or anything living on it, or to astronauts or satellites in space,” the agency said. “But the event is an amazing and totally unprecedented opportunity to learn much more about Apophis and similar near-Earth asteroids.”
What makes the encounter more than just a space spectacle is the tug-of-war angle. NASA says Earth’s gravitational pull during the close pass could potentially “stretch” and “squeeze” the asteroid. The concern isn’t catastrophic—more like the rock might respond in small, messy ways. In the agency’s view, that could trigger minor surface shifts, potentially small landslides or other similar movements. And how it responds—its behavior during that squeeze—will help scientists better understand Apophis and its composition.
NASA believes the asteroid is made from leftover cosmic materials from the early solar system that were never part of any planets or moons. Its mean diameter, a standardized measurement of the distance from one side of the rock to the other, is 1,115 feet. NASA also says the distance between the asteroid’s two farthest points is quite a bit longer, at 1,480 feet or more. Its shape is not known, but observations suggest it could look something like a peanut—whether that “peanut” turns out to be a smooth-ish lump or a more complicated shape, we’ll find out by watching it closely.
There’s a real-world detail that sticks with you when you read about these observations: the kind of quiet moment people get when they look up and realize the sky is doing something out of the ordinary. In this case, it’s April 13, 2029, and the Eastern Hemisphere gets the chance, weather permitting. Apophis was first discovered on June 19, 2004, by astronomers Roy Tucker, David Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Another group of astronomers caught sight of the asteroid again later that same year at an observatory in Australia—early sightings that helped set the stage for the monitoring that now, finally, is about to pay off.
If NASA’s estimate holds—events like this happening once every few thousand years—then the 2029 flyby will be the first of its kind in history to be closely observed with modern technology. That alone is a big deal, and also… kind of hard to picture. An asteroid this size passing this near doesn’t happen often. And as it happens, scientists won’t just be watching for drama. They’ll be measuring, comparing, and trying to understand how a leftover chunk of the early solar system behaves when Earth passes close by. Whether it stretches exactly as expected—or squeezes in a way that surprises them—could reshape what they think about similar near-Earth objects, and maybe how we’d better watch them in the future.
Emperor penguins downgraded to endangered as sea ice vanishes faster
AI ‘time machine’ projects wind and solar toward 2°C, not 1.5°C